Finally falling and fitting into place: My PhD journey, so far

After spending the first year of my PhD figuring out the direction of my research, I feel more certain than ever that I am in the right place at the right time. This might not seem like a big realization or feat. Still, for a PhD student in the UK coming from Africa and has “grown up” in research hearing about scooping, helicopter science, and brain drain, and wanting to do something that contributes to the reduction of the gap between the Global North and South, it becomes something big to find conviction.  

Doing my master’s research during the COVID era was a blessing in disguise, yet a confusing time. Being introduced to open science concepts, and seeing open data practices in action sparked my interest. This era seemed to remove aspects of embargos, scooping, and all the things I had heard for a long time. There was a free flow of knowledge and data. I completed my master's thesis and explored the health informatics space to get a clear view of how data flowed within research. This however was met with the sad truth that not all data was COVID data, and when global urgency is not attached to a dataset, things move slower.

This curiosity led me to my PhD project, where I came in with a lot of uncertainty and fear. I added an environmental aspect, wanting to answer the big question: The impact of climate change on health; the challenges integrating health and environment data. I was encouraged to have conversations and attend talks and conferences to know where to focus my attention. My supervisor suggested I begin with a qualitative study, something I initially considered too simplistic. But spending days listening to professionals speak, and even more days listening to them again and reading transcripts from these conversations and putting them in themes and codes using Nvivo, I could feel pieces falling into place in my head. 

I first developed data journeys for individuals using health and environment data in my first year. I interviewed professionals and then used a lightweight technique (Eleftheriou et al., 2018) to present these journeys visually. The revelation of the importance of provenance, policy, the lack of clearly defined roles in people of data, and the overall impact this has on the turnaround of research was concerning and fascinating. Further doing this research with different groups in the Global North and South proved how cultures influence sociotechnical interaction with data, and therefore the data-driven solutions being developed worldwide.

A pivotal moment was attending a talk on data colonialism, which highlighted the limitations of one-size-fits-all approaches, especially for data policies. A small dive into how climate change might exacerbate health inequities, especially in developing nations, also made it clear that we must strive for equality, not just equity. These revelations and more conferences and conversations prompted me to think about solutions like Trusted Research Environments (TREs) and Secure Data Enclaves (SDEs). Can these frameworks help combat "helicopter science" and empower the Global South to share data confidently, knowing they will be credited and supported?

So how do we ensure data credit is given where it is due, and we are empowering and giving everyone a fair chance and ensuring FAIRness? We take time to develop good material, make it accessible to everyone, ensure they know it is available for them to use, and empower them to continue with it even when external collaborators leave. My supervisor often reminds me that, as someone from the Global South studying in the UK I am uniquely positioned to contribute to such conversations. And this past year has shown me opportunities to tackle these issues. I am finally finding my place, not just in research, but within the landscape of data, equity and global collaboration.

- Read a lot, write a lot

- Ask questions, don't be ashamed

- Stay on course, even when you feel like you don't want to or can't. Yes you can, and yes you will

- Level up